The Chernagor Pirates

“Certainly, good riddance.” But Grus remained dissatisfied, like a man who’d just enjoyed a feast but had an annoying piece of gristle stuck between two back teeth. “They shouldn’t be running away, though, not when we haven’t finished beating them. They’ve never done that before.

“Maybe they know we’re going to win this time, and so they want to save themselves for fights next year or the year after,” Hirundo suggested.

“Maybe.” Grus still didn’t sound happy—still wasn’t happy. He explained why, repeating, “They’ve never done that before.” The Menteshe usually did the same sort of things over and over again. If they changed their ways, they had to have a reason… didn’t they?

“Maybe the Banished One is telling them what to do,” Hirundo said.

“Of course the Banished One is telling them what to do,” Grus answered. He hated the idea, which didn’t mean he disbelieved it. “They’re his creatures. They’re proud to be his creatures. But why is he telling them to do that? And how is he telling them? Pterocles can’t find any of his magic.”

Hirundo considered, then brightened. “Maybe he’s trying to drive you mad, to make you find reasons for things that haven’t got any.”

“Thank you so much,” Grus said. Hirundo bowed back, as he might have after any extraordinarily meritorious service. The worst of it was, Grus couldn’t be sure the general was wrong. The king knew he would go right on wasting time and losing sleep until he found an answer he could believe. He sighed. “The more we go on like this, the plainer it gets that we need prisoners. Until we know more, we’ll just keep coming out with one stupid guess after another.”

“I don’t think my guesses were stupid.” Mock anger filled Hirundo’s voice. “I think they were clever, perceptive, even brilliant.”

“You would,” the king muttered. “When your men finally do bring back a captive or two, we’ll see how brilliant and perceptive you were.”

“They’re doing their best, the same as I am,” Hirundo said.

“I hope theirs is better than yours.” Grus made sure he smiled so Hirundo knew he was joking. The horrible face the general made said he got the message but didn’t much care for it.

Along with the cavalry, the men aboard the river galleys got orders to capture Menteshe if they could. If they could… Suddenly, the lands on this side of the Stura began to seem like a country where the birds had just flown south for the winter. They had been here. The memory of them lingered. They would come back. But for now, when you wanted them most, they were gone.

Grus had never imagined that winning a war could leave him so unhappy. He had questions he wanted to ask, questions he needed to ask, and nobody to whom to ask them. He’d snarled at Hirundo in play. He started snarling at people in earnest.

“They’re gone,” Alauda said. “Thank the gods for it. Praise the gods for it. But, by Queen Quelea’s mercy, don’t complain about it.”

“I want to know why,” Grus said stubbornly. “They aren’t acting the way they’re supposed to, and that bothers me.” He’d been down this same road with Hirundo.

His new mistress had less patience for it. “Who cares?” she said with a toss of the head. “As long as they’re out of the kingdom, nothing else matters.” That held enough truth to be annoying, but not enough to make Grus quit trying to lay his hands on some of the nomads.

When at last he did, it was much easier than he’d thought it would be. Like a flock of birds that had fallen behind the rest because of a storm, a band of about twenty Menteshe rode down to the Stura and then along it, looking for boats to steal so they could cross. Three river galleys and a regiment of Hirundo’s horsemen converged on them. When Grus heard the news, he feared the nomads would fight to the death just to thwart him. But they didn’t. Overmatched, they threw up their hands and surrendered.

Their chieftain, a bushy-eyebrowed, big-nosed fellow named Yavlak, proved to speak good Avornan. “Here he is, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said, as though he were making Grus a present of the man.

And Grus felt as though Yavlak were a present, too. “Why are you Menteshe leaving Avornis?” he demanded.

Yavlak looked at him as he would have looked at any idiot. “Because we have to,” he answered.

“You have to? Who told you you have to? Was it the Banished One?” The king knew he sounded nervous, but couldn’t help it.

“The Fallen Star?” Now Yavlak looked puzzled. With those eyebrows, he did it very well. “No, the Fallen Star has nothing to do with it. Can it be you have not heard?” He didn’t seem to want to believe that; he acted like a man who had no choice. “By some mischance, we found out late. I thought even you miserable Avornans would surely know by now.”

“Found out what? Know what?” Grus wanted to strangle him. The only thing that held him back was the certain knowledge that he would have to go through this again with another nomad, one who might not be so fluent in Avornan, if he did.

Yavlak finally—and rudely—obliged him. “You stupid fool,” he said. “Found out that Prince Ulash is dead, of course.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Prince Ulash is dead.”

King Lanius stared at the messenger who brought the word north to the city of Avornis. “Are you sure?” he blurted. He realized the question was foolish as soon as it came out of his mouth. He couldn’t help asking, though. Ulash had been the strongest and canniest prince among the Menteshe for longer than Lanius had been alive. Imagining how things would go without him was nothing but a leap in the dark.

The messenger took the question seriously. That was one of the privileges of being a sovereign. “Yes, Your Majesty. There’s no doubt,” he answered. “The nomads went south of the Stura when they didn’t have to, and prisoners have told King Grus why.”

“All right. Thank you,” Lanius said, and then, as an afterthought, “Do you know who succeeds him? Is it Prince Sanjar or Prince Korkut?”

“That I can’t tell you. The nomads King Grus caught didn’t know,” the messenger said. “Grus is on his way back here now, with part of the army. The rest will stay in the south, in case whichever one of Ulash’s sons does take over decides to start the war up again.”

“Sensible,” Lanius said, hoping neither the messenger nor his own courtiers noticed his small sigh. With Grus back in the capital, Lanius would become a figurehead again. Part of Lanius insisted that didn’t matter—Grus was better at the day-to-day business of running Avornis than he was, and was welcome to it. But Lanius remembered how often he’d had power taken away from him. He resented it. He couldn’t help resenting it.

He dismissed the messenger, who bowed his way out of the throne room. As the king descended from the Diamond Throne, the news beat in his brain, pulsing like his own blood, pounding like a drum. Prince Ulash is dead.

What would come next? Lanius didn’t know. He was no prophet, to play the risky game of foreseeing the future. But things wouldn’t be the same. Neither Sanjar nor Korkut could hope to match Ulash for experience or cleverness.

Will whichever one of them comes to power in Yozgat make an apter tool for the Banished One’s hand? Lanius wondered. Again, he could only shrug. He had believed Ulash’s cleverness and power and success had won him more freedom of action than most Menteshe owned. But then the prince had hurled his nomads northward to help hold Grus away from Nishevatz. When the Banished One told him to move, he’d moved. So much for freedom of action.

By the time Lanius got back to his living quarters, news of Ulash’s death had spread all over the palace. Not everyone seemed sure who Ulash was. The king went past a couple of servants arguing over whether he was King of Thervingia or prince of a Chernagor city-state.

“Well, whoever he is, he isn’t anymore,” said the man who thought he’d ruled Thervingia.